The Interim
by ragingpussy
Summary: "No one's gonna come. And be real. The back of a Super 6? No one's even gonna fucking notice. And besides—" he smirked complacently "—even if they do they'll think I'm the ho and not you." Kyle, who's gone grandly off the rails, and Kenny, who wishes he didn't care. K2. May change to rating to M later. Reviews/critique appreciated.
1. Chapter 1

This was some Thursday night—Friday morning but functionally Thursday night—during the summer before Kenny McCormick's seventeenth birthday, slouched under the awning over the side entrance of the post office at the shitty end of Main. He wanted to put up his parka hood but couldn't, exactly. Fact was he already didn't look the way he supposed he best ought to for this sort of thing but whatever because the plausibility of him being "on his way to the convenience store" in case Barbrady drove by on his way back from Cartman's house—functionally Cartman's mom's house—was paramount.

It was real quiet, there on 3rd and Main that night.

Eventually a silver station wagon hesitated. Wyoming plate. Kenny, he kicked off the wall with his heel and straightened himself, watched the vehicle make a U onto the near side of the street, watched it slow to a trundle at the curb, window eked down halfway. He felt compulsively, nervously for the weight of his cell phone through the outside of his coat. He'd never stopped being nervous, probably wouldn't ever.

"D-do you need a ride son? It's late to be out here," the driver called. His voice trembled a bit as he spoke and Kenny smirked in spite of himself, the guy maybe late fifties, balding mousy hair.

"That'd be nice." He inclined his head, half-smiled. "I'm not really going anywhere though."

Kenny when he spoke to them, these guys, let his mouth stay slightly parted after he'd finished speaking, let his breath hover in the air.

"What's your name?"

"It's—" the corner of his mouth twitched in an imperceptible sneer "—Kyle."

"How old are you Kyle?"

"Eighteen." Kenny's lower lid flickered in annoyance at this half-assed bit of preemptive interrogation but his voice remained toneless. At how they always asked but didn't really care, but asked anyway just to have asked. "Why? Do I look too old to sate your pedophiliac urges?"

The driver looked taken aback, a flicker of offense taken, but offered an uncomfortable chuckle. He said "Wow, boy" and "Don't see a lot of your type where I live" and Kenny, before stepping off the curb, gave the street a dutiful but cursory scan for anyone who might be taking more than just a casual interest in their interaction but it was an appropriately ungodly hour and he could see no one at all.

—

He was mistaken though, Kenny, because there was a spectator, and a very intent one.

This was Kyle Broflovski, crumpled on his side against the corner of the rhinoplasty clinic a block down, upper body that extended beyond the brick wall obscured by a blue newspaper dispenser to the side of the clinic entrance. He peered through the legs of the metal receptacle, head cushioned against the sidewalk by a folded beanie. He wasn't allowed to drive and had therefore followed Kenny here on his bike, awkwardly so, as the town was so irksomely threadbare he'd had to wait for Kenny to turn every corner fully before closing the distance between them again.

Furthermore, Kyle had a look to him, one that Kenny would've known in a split second, just a hair of Kyle in the periphery of his vision and he would've known.

Maybe it was his clothes that were generally expensive but somehow never fit him right. Like those charcoal khakis with an unfortunate lengthwise gash in the left knee, purchased by Sheila on an anniversary in Madrid, that were thin-cut but barely skimmed his hips and hence too low in the crotch. Or perhaps more conspicuously a massive denim jacket he wore in the summer, the sleeves of which pooled thickly against the cuffs of his old Gore-Tex ski gloves that he'd cut the fingers off of with a pocket blade—effectively ruining their capacity for future wintertime use—while he and Stan had been lunching in an over-heated base lodge at Breckenridge, declaring to an appalled Kenny later that he was perfectly justified in devastating a two-hundred dollar pair of gloves because he just couldn't _stand_ having to remove them one more time _just_ to check his phone or unzip his fly to piss. It was perhaps a pillow of material spilling over the back of his jacket collar, an absurd green, that was the hood of his school baseball sweatshirt from freshman year. Even more likely, it was his coiling cinnamon hair which, though charming in its own right if not for the ocular cacophony that comprised the rest of his look, he was wise to rarely let escape from under a range of beanies, most of which were vexingly green but one of which was black, which the one he wore that night.

Kyle gave the station wagon a couple hundred feet, just enough to turn off Main and onto the unlit parkway. When they turned he followed, swiping the beanie off the ground and yanking it over his hair, on a bike he barely rode twice a year due to the town's nearly perpetual glacial conditions, his heart pounding painfully with trepidation.

—

"Use this," Kenny demanded, flinging a square foil packet over his shoulder. It was the only thing he'd bothered to say since he'd been picked up. His nerves had dulled, as they usually did, leaving him rather acutely tired.

"Right you are son."

"And for fuck's sake stop calling me 'son,'" he all but snapped, turning to eye the man over his shoulder, letting the incredulity show plain on his face. "Doesn't that make you feel weird?"

The guy looked down, embarrassed. "You're right kid," he mumbled. "I ah, don't have any children."

Kenny raised an eyebrow and turned his back on the guy to face the yet untouched motel bed. He slid his crewneck sweatshirt over his head and shot it in a ball at the window-side sofa. He kicked off his pants and tossed those too.

—

Kyle was certainly at that point thinking: Those retarded sprints for pre-season baseball practice actually did something, apparently.

Regardless, he felt he was bordering on cardiac arrest, lungs blown dry and quadriceps and adductors smoldering acidly, even the fronts of his calves burning and those fuckers _never_ hurt, like, on anyone as far as he knew. Kyle pedaled standing up because it felt a bit more like running that way, plus it was allegedly faster, though the bike sometimes careened when he overstepped his rhythm. It was so dark on the road that if he lost sight of their taillight he'd quite likely be stranded until daybreak, which was unfortunate because people around here drove badly and _fast_ , speed limit 75 with a customary 15 mph piss-town courtesy leeway. When the thick darkness finally swallowed the vehicle Kyle screamed a drawn Fuck! into the wind but pedaled on, _just to the end of the parkway and then I'll go back, just to the end of the goddamn parkway._

He didn't need to.

About another mile out he coasted into the blue neon glow of a sign reading MOTEL. Amidst the cluster of cars in the lot he spotted the one, the silver station wagon with a Wyoming plate, its occupants departed but its engine still crackling in the cool night air.


	2. Chapter 2

Kyle found them in the room second to the end. There were barely twenty rooms in the entire motel complex, only about half of them even occupied. He'd checked them each with an ear against the door, hearing mostly nothing, unsure whether it was because the doors stifled more than they seemed capable of or because his heart was pounding too loudly in his ears.

Kenny's door was the seventh he checked.

They were the telltale sounds, really. Heavy breathing and springs creaking. He crouched below the window, fingers like claws hooked on the sill, a vertical band of escaped orange lamplight contoured over his face and right hand from where the blinds didn't quite meet. He could see just barely into the cramped room, see two forms moving atop a rumpled bedspread.

Kenny, on elbows and splayed knees, eyes screwed shut and teeth gritted. A thirsted grunting coming from above him, from the stranger whose face Kyle could not bring himself to look at, whose fingers fingers bruised into Kenny's hips slick with perspiration. His hands clutching the hair at the back of his head bowed into the mattress, enduring dismally. Kyle felt perhaps he might be sick. He felt he would like very much in fact to vomit but half-feared he would be unable to hack the contents of his stomach past the cramping constriction in his throat. He could not bring himself to look away, even when his nasal passages began to smart and his vision blurred.

—

When they were done the guy gave Kenny a wrinkled promised fifty, hesitated, and said 'hell' under his breath before letting another tattered twenty flutter into Kenny's lap, Kenny whose eyes widened momentarily and said "Wow dude, thanks." He straightened the bills against his knee.

"No problem kid. Need a ride home?"

"Nah I'm good." He flopped back onto the bed, still shirtless. Actually, a ride would have been nice but he was tired and he was done and the guy'd paid the room already and it was too odd an hour to show up home anyway. He extended a hand into the air, letting his head fall to the side to meet the man's eyes. "Nice doin' business with ya," he whispered, smirked as the guy took his hand and gave it a tentative, flaccid pump. "You know sir," Kenny continued slyly, "I don't mean to be coarse with a customer, but if you shook more like you fucked I bet you'd be doin' a whole lot better in life."

The man's eyes widened, round face flushing. He scratched his head, blinked rapidly before sighing and reaching down to pat Kenny's head, which Kenny found horribly funny but did not laugh. The man shook his coat over his round back, looked over his shoulder with one hand on the doorknob.

"You're a good kid, Kyle," he said, his voice strangely melancholy.

"Yeah, yeah."

Kenny rolled his eyes at the ceiling, feeling oddly vacant.

He waited for the door to click closed before sitting up and shrugging his crewneck back on. He put his face into his hands and exhaled, legs dangling over the edge of the bed. He folded the money into the inside pocket of his parka, turned out the light, and left.

Outside, the sound of pattering feet.

Alarmed, he jerked towards the sound.

A slim figure hurtling away, flickering in and out of darkness as he flew under the periodically placed door lights outside each motel room. Overlarge jacket and copper curls brimming over the hem of a black beanie.

"Kyle!" he shouted, his unprepared voice breaking shrilly in his throat. The figure froze at the end of the concrete walkway, fingers clawed and twitching. Kenny approached, lips pressed tightly and hands clenched. His footsteps began to quicken audibly, which caused Kyle—he was sure it was Kyle—to apparently panic, because he bolted. Kenny sprinted after.

He caught him in the narrow passage between the rooms complex and check-in office by the fabric of his green hoodie, slammed him choking into the wall.

"I'm sorry dude!" he gasped, green eyes shining with pain. "S—hah—seriously, don't get worked up man, I was just—"

"I can't believe you _followed_ me here!" Kenny spat, jerking Kyle back and forth with hands vice-like around around his neck for emphasis.  
"I was curious man!"

"Curious to see me getting _fucked_? By some _random guy_?"

"I just wanted to know where you went at night!"

"How the fuck did you even know I went anywhere at night?"

"Dude let me—ah!—let me off al—fuck!—let me off alright?"

Kenny let him fall panting on the ground against the brick wall. The lights in the passageway had burned out and he could not see Kyle's face. Only a triangle of blue glow from the MOTEL sign illuminated Kyle's crumpled leg, one hand of five thin curled fingers jutting from the black mass that was a mutilated ski glove, palm braced against the concrete.

"I followed you back from Stan's a couple times but you didn't go home."

"You are fucking sick," Kenny said weakly. He let himself fall back against the opposite wall.

"Sorry man, I said I'm sorry. It's just—"

He folded his hands in his lap, a pleased visage of confidence that the subsequent rationale would exonerate him:

"—I _really_ like you."

Kenny tented his hands over his nose and mouth, thumbs braced under his jaw, and groaned. They were silent for maybe twenty seconds, Kenny's teeth grinding audibly, before Kyle crawled forward, leaned up from his knees.

"So, how much did he pay you?"  
Kenny glared murder.

"Sorry."

"…"

"But seriously dude, how much?"

Kenny fisted his hair and wrenched, took a moment to grit his teeth before answering.

"Wow, dude, _wow_. And it only took like fifteen minutes!"

Kenny's eyes widened, him incensed and incredulous, but he forced himself calm. "Will you please shut up?" he growled. "I don't know why you're getting off on this so much—"

"Oh I'm not getting off on it. It's just interesting."

"Interesting?"

Kyle batted his lids, thickly copper-lashed, nodded.

"Well, Kyle, if you find it so damn _interesting_ why don't you go try it yourself? Why don't _you_ go wait on corners at 2 am and open your legs for any psycho come through pretending to look for the county parkway and hope they don't—"

"Oh come on Kenny, I know you don't get into cars with just _anyone_ , you use your head. And that didn't look half-bad in there, I mean he even patted your little noggin' and gave you like—what is that—a forty percent tip? Hell if I'm ever broke maybe I'll—"

Kenny could not for the life of him comprehend this situation. Kyle sitting there on the cement, so vulnerably, huge jacket unbuttoned and hanging off one shoulder, face tilted to the side and pale neck exposed, arms draped softly beside open knees, chattering away. Kenny not for the _life_ of him could comprehend it, this defiant defenselessness, because Kyle was not thick, not one damn bit, and when he acted like it he exerted himself to. Kenny's fingers curled dangerously and Kyle flinched but spoke intently on, if not positively louder and lewder and more vehemently. Finally he could not stand it anymore and howled "Shut up!" and kicked Kyle squarely in the chest before doubling over himself, heels of his hands jammed into his eye sockets.

It was really too much, this.

Kyle, here, the dull throbbing neon signs and burst bulbs and narrow walkway almost black. The night breeze that smelled faintly of exhaust. Kyle on all fours, hacking at the ground. "God _damn_ Kenny," he rasped.

"Why do you act like this? Why do you say these things?" Kenny hissed, pounding his eyes so hard it starred behind his lids.

Kyle did not respond. Kenny wanted to pull him forward into the light, peel his lids back, glare into the blacks of his eyes and see what little demons lived inside his skull that made him such a caustic, blathering, impulsive wreck. It had to be the demons because it was not Kyle— _Kyle_ was not like this. Kenny braced himself for the sullen, crumpled kid to retort something horrid, something so degradingly acutely painful that only his smart prick mouth could have spoken it, but what actually left his lips was very quiet, somber.

"You said your name was Kyle."

"I know. I don't know why I said that ok? I'm—"

His breath was cut off by Kyle's temple falling against his chest. "You don't have to say you're sorry," he said, slightly muffled by Kenny's parka. "I don't mind. I liked it actually. You should always say your name is Kyle."

Kenny was quite unsure how to respond to this. He didn't.

Kyle raised his chin to rest on Kenny's shoulder.

"You smell sweaty," Kenny commented lamely. He reached up to pinch Kyle's earlobe between his knuckles. The skin behind his jaw tingled where it almost met Kyle's cheekbone.

"I've been sweating, yes. I biked."

"Sweet fuckin' Jesus…"

"I was like, please God don't let them turn onto the freeway, don't let them onto the freeway, please oh please—"

Kenny snorted.

"—oh please oh please oh please oh _please_ —"

He chanted impishly, and Kenny was beginning to laugh before he felt the weight of hands at the top of his pants.

"No." Sternly.

"I thought you kept it clean."

"I do."

"Well then I don't see what the problem is." He started at Kenny's pants again and Kenny felt a surge of heat to his groin as Kyle's fingers brushed against him.

"Kyle _stop_ , seriously—" he pried him away by his wrists. Kyle twisted his hands free and sank back, glaring up from a crouch. He fished through his pockets and ripped the wrapper from a bright yellow stick of gum, crammed it between his teeth and chewed it in drawn, pounding motions, the flickering of his jaw exaggerated by the diffuse neon half-light on the side of his face.

"What's your problem Kenny?" he drawled. "You let all those dirty ass-suckers with bloody crust 'round the side of their mouths on you but not me?" He snickered. "Is it cause I don't _pay_ you?"

"Don't you fucking start that again. And… don't talk about them like that," he added resignedly, letting his head fall sideways against the wall with a dull thud but a sharp sting. Kyle reached up to run a single index finger down the exposed flexor in his neck, a touch Kenny swatted away. "And where'd you even get that anyway? That's not even—that's just gross."

"I know right?" he egged, eyes deep and wide and brows drawn, bobbing his head slowly, emphatically. Kenny scowled and looked away.

"I thought you were like a germaphobe. Always getting sick and all."

"Jesus Christ dude." He rolled his eyes. "That was then, this is now."

"What if someone comes."

"No one's gonna come. And be real. The back of a Super 6? No one's even gonna fucking notice. And besides—" he smirked complacently "—even if they do they'll think I'm the ho and not you."

"That's like, not even remotely funny Kyle."

Kyle's ears, however, had closed down for the night and he came forward onto his knees, dragged Kenny's zipper down with a crack and wrenched his pants down to his thighs. Kenny when he felt the shock of cool air could no longer deny how badly he desired it, tore Kyle's hat off and wound his fingers into the thickly curled hair at the crown of his head. It was hot and still sweaty. Kyle pushed Kenny's shirt up and pressed his lips into the skin and Kenny, when he realized that Kyle was attempting to dispose of his chewing gum by pressing it into Kenny's navel with his tongue, cuffed him on the side of the head.

Kyle snickered.

Kenny shuddered when he felt Kyle's lips at the head of his cock. Kyle sucked him wetly and deeply, saliva dripping grandly from the corners of his mouth, and Kenny smashed his lips and bit them not to moan and tried not to think of all the things wrong with this situation.


	3. Chapter 3

CH3

Kids don't fight in every town but in South Park they did.

People egged too, loved it, hooted and screamed and whistled. No one looked twice at a black-eyed or split-lipped kid unless it was female in an appealing way or perhaps under the age of five or six. To strangers it might've seemed this plebeian aggression was all just an effect of the place being so goddamn dull or whatever, but the fact was for a pissant little one-street hick town a lot sure did go on there. South Park was, in euphemism, character-driven.

There were no rules. It was dirty and sick and therefore wildly gratifying. There'd be shouts of "Don't grab, pussy!" (vocative comma sometimes n/a) or cackles of "You fight like a cheap ho!" or "It's your own fault for wearing boxers, you fag!" They convened in lopsided rings behind the post office, sometimes at the pond, occasionally out back behind Tom's Rhinoplasty or in the parking lot of "Shitty" Wok. City Wok, brown and cheap and salty-sweet, was a damn good chaser for a bloody nose.

Today it was Kenny McCormick versus Craig Tucker, ages 14 and almost-no-longer-14, on account of "Fucker fed my guinea pig Xanax and now it won't move." Kyle Broflovski's idea, Tweek Tweak's drugs, twenty dollars to do it, and another sixty against Token, Clyde and Butters for the fight with half for whoever won. Butters hadn't really wanted to partake and was looking on rather queasily. Token documented with an old DSLR.

"Get him Kenny!" Kyle screamed. Brows drawn into a dark V, eyes bright and voice hoarse, backpack discarded at the curb. Kyle for some reason really got a kick out of this stuff, especially when Stan wasn't around to keep a lid on him. Which wasn't to say that Stan didn't like it, but just that Kyle _really_ liked it. Stan was at the last football game of his freshman season, a supposedly important event that none of of them barring Stan had bothered to attend.

Craig had Kenny by his neck and was pounding him in the ribs. The two of them writhing on the concrete hovered too close to Kyle's perch on the periphery and Kyle took the opportunity boot Craig's hip shouting "Watch it, fucker!" which earned him a snarl from Craig and Kenny a crack at Craig's nose with an elbow. Craig won anyway, aided by vengeance and perhaps being better-fed. Kenny lay on his back, hands fluttering painfully over his sore abdomen which he was kind of afraid to touch.

Token checked through the clicks on his camera, looking pleased and tilting the monitor to show Clyde a few choice shots.

"Nice fight man," Kenny winked stickily. One eye wouldn't quite open right.

"You too." Craig's voice was acid and he blotted his flushing nose with a sweatshirt sleeve. He turned on Kyle. "I know it was your idea Broflovski. I'll take you next week."

"Be my guest, you scrawny-ass shit." Kyle glowered them as they left, swiped his backpack off the curb by a single strap. "Come on Kenny," he said, yanking Kenny flailing to his feet by the back of his shirt. "We can go to my house. I'll get you something to eat and you can use the shower."

Kenny gave a weak thumbs up. Kyle slung Kenny's backpack over his other shoulder.

"Damnit, now I'm like broke," he sighed.

—

Kyle studied after getting Kenny squared away. Kenny had some peanut butter on Wheat Thins and a reheated cut of salmon, showered in Kyle's bathroom and crashed on Kyle's couch in a green baseball sweatshirt that read BROFLOVSKI on the back.

Stan arrived at ten after the game, with Cartman. Stan looking sour and Cartman smug, meaning that either they'd lost or Stan had spotted a turquoise, yellow-pom-topped beanie hovering too close to a lavender beret in the stands. Or, like, both. Only Stan knew and no one else really cared.

"Dude, what happened to Kenny?" Stan leaned over the couch, elbows braced against the back. He reached down to prod Kenny's sleeping face.

"Oh you know." Kyle didn't look up from his laptop in the dining room. Papers, textbooks, packets, spiral bound notebooks strewn over the surface. He was biting his nails. Probably checking his grades but Stan couldn't tell because the screen was turned away. "Craig's a little cunt."

"Kyle, seriously? Why don't you look out for Kenny sometimes?" Stan extended an index finger and took a swipe at the corner of Kenny's swelling eye, rubbed the discharge against his thumb and grimaced. "Aw man, he's oozing, sick!"

"Well you shoulda seen Craig! His nose was bleeding like. Like a busted fire hydrant."

"You're fulla shit, Jew," Cartman scoffed, flopping heavily onto the sofa and sending Kenny's body a positive few inches into the air and eyes flying open from slumber with a little "Ah?!"

"Whatever fatass. I'm gonna do him next week anyway. And you're next after me."

"Are you sure you wanna fight Craig?" Stan asked, frowning. He turned back to the sofa. "Oh hey Kenny. Heard you got your ass whipped."

Kenny laughed, which actually kinda hurt. "Yeah but I still got twenty from Kyle for sedating Craig's guinea pig," he piped. Cartman raised an eyebrow.

"Kahl, you seriously need to stop paying Kenny to do stupid shit. It's just not cool. Poor people are an important part of the ecosystem—ugh, ecosystem, I fuckin' hate that word—and it's important they stay poor. Otherwise you're like, jeopardizing societal harmony."

"Eat shit!"

And so it went.

—

It was a Friday, which meant they grilled.

The whole thing was, at best, a lame Friday night scene—all of them out on Kyle's snow-clad backyard lawn in below-freezing, Stan grilling in a ski jacket and pom-topped blue beanie because he had recently becoming addicted to grilling, Kyle and Cartman on either side, bitching over the flame of some neglected vegetables combusting, Kenny packing snow between soaked mittens to press over his eye. The reason there were even vegetables present in the first place was that Girls ate vegetables, and Girls was the only reason Stan even liked grilling.

Kenny's eye finally started to go numb from the ice and so he lifted up Cartman's jacket and pressed the side of his face into Cartman's back fat. "Man, that feels nice on a busted eye," he hummed.

"Ay! Get off me po boy! Your face is cold as ice!"

Stan snorted and dropped a sausage into the snow. Kyle snickered.

Kenny, though he would not perhaps profess it, was a great deal fonder of Cartman than the other two were. Kyle was typically absorbed with schoolwork or abusing Ike and Stan spent most of his spare time chasing pussy—not that Kenny didn't chase pussy, but where Stan did it in a drab, luring, beat-around-the-bush sorta well-rounded way, Kenny was lewdly direct, efficient, and subsequently exempt from devoting massive amounts of time to the ordeal—but Cartman always seemed to have time for him. They skipped a lot of class together. Cartman was, in his blatant psychopathy, always looking for something more. If pressed most would admit that, of all the kids in South Park, Cartman seemed to make the most out of his youthful experience.

The four of them ate in Kyle's living room, Stan reclined comfortably in the Eames chair, Kyle straddling the piano bench and pecking glumly at his laptop propped in front of him, Kenny folded into the corner of the L-sofa and Cartman positively chortling at the violent scenes in Goodfellas which played in the background.

It was a very normal Friday night until Stan and Cartman left but Kyle suggested that Kenny stay, at which point things became perhaps a bit more strange.


	4. Chapter 4

Perhaps, in some way, it was Sheila's fault.

Kenny entertained the idea briefly, crouched at the top of the stairs just outside Kyle's bedroom. He could see just barely into the kitchen, the lower half of Sheila's rotund form perched atop a stool at the marble-topped island, Kyle standing with his back to Kenny clutching with both hands a white ceramic plate bearing a haphazardly-pasted peanut butter sandwich.

"—smart boy Kyle, but you are _not_ doing your best. You have a lot of potential and—"

Sheila, in her Jersey accent. "Sorry dude my mom wants to talk to me," Kyle had said, clawing the sides of his head vexed-eyed, Sheila's cries of "Kyle? Kyle!" still ringing up through the floor from downstairs. "She's been all up in my face ever since we started high school. First semester grades aren't even out yet. It's totally gay. I'll get you a sandwich or something. Peanut butter ok?"

Yes, peanut butter sounded fucking awesome. Kenny grinned for thanks, glancing up from the notepad on his knees, Kyle's for math, where he'd been doodling strip comics in the margins between clusters of numbers and letters and various operations he didn't recognize. A few seconds after Kyle left the room Kenny tossed down the notebook and crept silently after.

"—start thinking about the future. You want to have a good job in the future bubbelah, and that means you need to start taking things a bit more seriously and putting your best—"

These talks, Kenny didn't really understand them, these relics from a foreign world of ambition and expectation and performance. Sheila's words, which flushed so urgently from her lipsticked mouth ran over his ears like water, cool, abstract and profoundly unaffecting. He watched Kyle's back. He leaned his head against the stair railing, sighed, eyed the plate in Kyle's hands glumly. He would just wait like that. It was fucking mundane already, this sort of conversation, occurring so routinely at Kyle's house late on Friday nights.

"Mom, please—" Kyle was trying to say. His flinched as she cut him off again.

"—smarter than other kids Kyle, you should be _proud_ that your father and I expect such things from you, ok? Life isn't a joke anymore, bubbelah. To be honest—"

 _Fair enough_ , Kenny thought dispassionately to himself. He eyes fell on Kyle again, Kyle's shoulders narrowing rigidly, and on second review it seemed that perhaps the conversation was no longer so peachy as it had initially seemed. Another couple fluxes of verbosity and Kyle was shaking his wrists back and forth, hands blurring into half-discs as they shook, a nervous habit of his.

Kenny lifted his head off the rails, frowned.

"—handsome, intelligent young man like you. You could be so—"

Sheila was reaching to pet Kyle's jaw. Kenny blinked. _No don't do that,_ he thought, a sudden twinge of panic. Her wedding ring glinted dangerously as her forearm supinated.

"Shut up!" Kyle screamed. With a slice of his arm like a tennis serve he flung the plate away and it split rather spectacularly against the opposite wall, shards skating across the floor sounding like marbles.

"Kyle!" Sheila shrieked.

Kyle sank onto his knees, wrapped his forearms over his head and buried his hands deep in the back of his hair. Sheila struggled off the kitchen stool with a thump.

"Don't come over here," came tightly Kyle's voice, gritted and muffled. "I'm really, really sorry. I had a really long week. I'll clean it up. Please just go to bed."

"Bubbelah…"

"I'm really sorry," he gritted. Sheila sighed, reached out as if to pat the back of his head, reconsidered, and left.

Kyle released from his balled crouch and flopped onto his back on the kitchen floor. "Mother _fuck_ ," he hissed into the air. He rolled over, scanned the stairs and froze appalled.

There was Kenny.

"I'll help you with that," Kenny blurted, averted his eyes, leapt up, felt near tumbling down the stairs as he descended by twos. He snatched the dustpan from under the sink. Kenny could feel Kyle watching him and his face began to burn and he kept sweeping at the corners of the kitchen even after there was nothing left.

"All done," he announced, as if it wasn't fucking obvious. He didn't meet Kyle's gaze.

"Hey Kenny, I'm sorry but maybe you shouldn't stay over tonight."

Relief. "Yeah of course, that's totally chill."

"But can I walk you home?"

Kenny's heart lifted before immediately thereafter sinking, with a sort of foolish-feeling disappointment. Because—no.

"S-sure dude."

—

"I can't believe you fucking watched that."

Kyle had been silent for surprisingly long before sidelong hissing that.

"Dude, I'm sorry," Kenny replied, scratching the back of his head. He felt he ought to say more but couldn't think of what. He placated this anxiety with the rationale that it was probably better to just let Kyle steam it out anyway.

"Like don't you feel weird eavesdropping on other people's personal conversations? I mean I don't listen in when _your_ mom's going at _you_. You fucking piss me off."

A few things he thought: First of all, there'd been nothing _personal_ about the conversation until the end, and he obviously couldn't un-hear something he didn't barely see coming. Second, none of them were ever at Kenny's, least of all Kyle. Finally, Kenny's mom never even "went at him" like that, least not about those things, in the first place. And even more finally, there was something else on Kyle's mind and he was doing a piss poor job of hiding it.

"Listen dude," Kenny sighed, testing a glance over at Kyle who was visibly fuming. "What are you so worked up about?"

"I dunno man," he grumbled. "I just—"

He looked suddenly lost.

"You know, she made me sign up for calculus even though I never took the prerequisite class. So I had to learn all that preliminary crap on my own last August and the shit's fucking hard 'cause I barely have a handle on the old stuff and I'm the only freshman there so I feel retarded asking questions."

"Uh-huh." Kenny raised an eyebrow to commend a nice try.

"Okay it's not that, it's—I just I hate it when she says all those things. Like 'Kyle, bubbelah you're so gifted'—" he crossed his eyes absurdly as he said the word 'bubbelah' which made the corner of Kenny's mouth twitch "—'cause it makes me feel awkward as hell, like I have to grow up and become like—I dunno—a sexy ripped version of Moses that specializes in, like—personal injury litigation or some-fucking-thing."

"I get what you're saying." Kenny nodded absently.

"No—Kenny, why do you ask me what's going on when you don't like what I tell you?—I don't know. I—"

He broke off, and they walked in silence. They were just crossing the tracks, the whole place deserted and damply silent with snow. Kenny hitched himself lightly over the crossing gate, Kyle behind him. The four oven them had made a dumb pact when they were younger not to just go around the thing, purely to see Cartman grunt and struggle.

They'd reached Kenny's neighborhood by the time Kyle spoke again.

"Ok Kenny I just got really pissed back there."

"I know dude." Kenny stopped to grind a pinecone into the snow with his heel.

"I didn't like it—it just got to me when—like when she was like, 'life isn't a joke anymore.'"

"Are you serious?"

"Dude, shut up, ok? You fuckin' asked. But anyway like, what does that even mean, 'life isn't a joke anymore?' Like what, things were a joke when we were kids? 'Cause what about that was a joke? The fact that we were happy?" He scoffed. "I mean if anything, it seems like life is just starting to _become_ a joke."

Kyle's eyes were pained and Kenny resisted the urge to sigh. Not because he was exasperated or annoyed or anything, but because the conversation felt suddenly, irreversibly heavy.

"She's just tryna get you to grow up a bit man."

Kyle didn't respond, just scowled.

Kenny kicked the side of his friend's sneaker lightly, affectionately.

—

Turns out Kyle didn't wanna go home.

"You know there isn't like, anything to do here though," Kenny said as he unlocked the front door. "You don't have to take your shoes off," he added over his shoulder. The house was dark.

"Dude, do your parents go to bed this early?"  
It was a little after midnight.

"No they're just not home. Dunno where the hell they are."

They went to Kenny's room. Kenny on his bed, Kyle perched on a crate by the the door, looking around.

"I forgot how your room is like, simultaneously cramped and empty. Oh wait I guess the word for that is 'small.'"

Kyle's phone buzzed. Kenny watched him scowl at the screen. He tapped out a short message. Phone buzzed again. "Bitch," Kyle muttered. Probably his mom, Kenny thought, trying not to smile as the tune of "Kyle's Mom is a Big Fat Bitch" in Cartman's quacking tones resurfaced vaguely in his head.

"Kyle."

"Yeah?"

"I'm not much help when it comes to that school stuff. Like, I honestly don't really get it when you say you're stressed out about grades and college. I mean to me—"

The phone buzzed again. Kyle huffed, shook his head for Kenny to ignore it.

"—Okay. I mean to me, pulling a B in calculus seems awesome. And I don't get why your mom gets her tits in such a knot. And I think you should be less worried about shit 'cause you're doing good. Well."

Kyle smiled somewhat sadly at the carpet. "That's nice of you dude. To be honest though it's not my mom. It's like, me."

"Whaddaya you mean?"

"I mean that, like, I'm confused. As to what I should do. With like, myself. And of course to my mom it's very clear what I should do—"

The phone buzzed again.

"—Sorry. What I was saying is, to her it's really cut-and-dry, like as in 'get As and go to a fancy college' so I try my best to—you know—do that and not worry, but at the same time I feel like I just can't _get_ behind it, like—"

The phone, this time in two consecutive buzzes for a text that couldn't all fit in one bubble. "Fuckin' sorry," Kyle muttered. Kenny watched his lips move silently, slightly parted as he read the text to himself, watched Kyle turn the phone off and sigh, still for a moment before clearing his throat and straightening up on the bench.

"Things aren't the same for you and me. I know," Kyle continued. His eyes were oddly narrowed and Kenny noticed he was suddenly talking very quickly as if, if he didn't force these words out, they might become trapped at his tonsils and decay into unuttered lexical plaque or whatever-the-fuck. "So let's do something that transcends socioeconomic and educational differences."

"Uh… Like—" Kenny scoffed, mildly annoyed at this sudden flux of cryptic speech even though he knew, at this point anyway, that Kyle did it when he was nervous and without intent to aggravate. "—you wanna play catch or something?"

"No I wanna fuck."

"You…" Kenny rubbed the unbruised eye with the heel of his hand. He was tired, truly. "…sorry. Come again?"

"Dude I think you fuckin' heard me," Kyle frowned.

Kyle was standing over his bed, pale face cocked against the lamplight. His eyes had that Euro-Semite look, dark brows over heavy lids. His hair was more russet now. Dusty freckles where the sun hit and irises that militaristic shade of green.

If he was gonna be real about it Kenny had noticed this all before—as in, many, many times—but it was different being, like, _ambushed_ with it, like—forced to confront everything he thought was holy and beautiful on a notice so short it could possibly be considered negative.

"I, uh—"

"It's ok with you right? Like, you've had sex with Bebe tons of times right? So it's not like this is a big thing or whatever."

"Y-yeah but—"

"Ok good."

Kyle had one knee on the bed and Kenny scrambled backwards against the wall. He was searching desperately for words but couldn't find them. Kyle leaned over and dragged him closer with two hands around his ankle. The bedspread caught and rumpled underneath him. Kyle grasped the hem of Kenny's sweatshirt and plucked it over his head, Kenny resurfacing pink-cheeked and wild-haired. His hands traveled to Kenny's pants, thin fingers cold as they brushed against his skin while working at his fly.

"Wait," Kenny blurted. "I—"

"It's ok Kenny," Kyle said quietly. His fingers had elapsed the zipper and were slipping past the waistband of Kenny's boxers. Perhaps the chill of Kyle's hands had galvanized the congealed sectors of Kenny's brain because:

"I have herpes!" Kenny nearly shouted. "I-I got it from Bebe! It's—it's real bad!"

Kyle raised an eyebrow.

"No you don't." But he withdrew his hands from Kenny's pants and folded them neatly in his lap. He sighed before looking Kenny square in the eyes.

"If you don't want to, just say it."

"Say…"

"Say you don't want to."

Kenny faltered.

"Here, I'll help you—" he grasped Kenny's chin between his thumb and moved moved it up and down mechanically, speaking out the side of his mouth like a ventriloquist as he did: "'I. Do. Not. Want. To. Fu—"

"Stop that!"

"Then say it yourself."

"I…"

Kyle inclined his head expectantly, motioning with a hand rotating on its wrist like a forward-turning gear for him to continue.

"I…"

Kyle glared now. "Look, you can't even say it."

Kenny must have looked positively distraught because Kyle's eyes softened and he smiled wanly and suddenly Kenny felt a desperate urge to explain. Things.

"I know I—with a lot of other people," he whispered. "But you're—"

"Different?"

Kyle let his head fall sideways onto Kenny's shoulder. His hair tickled Kenny's neck and Kenny declined his head slightly to put his nose and lips into the curls. Kyle's hair smelled like mint. "It's not true," Kyle said, speaking dully to the wall. "I'm not different. No one's different. That's all just in your imagination. Now can we please fuck."

His hands, they'd crept back to the bend of Kenny's hips and Kenny didn't stop them, let them shimmy his pants down and touch him. He breathed deeply into Kyle's hair, opened his mouth and ran his teeth along Kyle's shoulder.

Kyle shoved him back, elbowed his knees apart and arched down to use his mouth and Kenny moaned weakly. Curled his fingers into Kyle's hair, hips jerked as he tried not to thrust, feeling very distinctly the flickering of Kyle's tongue against him. He struggled grandly to reach beneath his bed with one arm as Kyle worked, finally pulling up with difficulty a condom packet grasped barely by its corner.

"Here," he rasped, mouth parched and hot.

Kyle plucked it from him without even looking up, holding up the foil square between his index and middle finger shaped into tongs, casually, like "got your memo thanks." He sucked more deeply and Kenny felt the back of his throat, the flick of the underside of his tongue as he came up, the graze of his teeth as he went down. He shuddered, insides of his knees pressing into Kyle's ribcage.

"Kyle," he whispered. "Ky—"

He broke off, moaning. His head was beginning to pound, eyes fluttering. He grabbed a fistful of Kyle's hair, wrenched him off, the both of them panting. Kyle's face was flushed and he wiped a trail of saliva from his chin with the back of his hand. He understood, swatted Kenny's hand away and ripped open the packet with his teeth, exactly as they'd been taught in school not to do. Kenny pumped himself as Kyle kicked off his pants and took care of logistics, feeling too needy at that point to go even a few moments without being touched.

"Turn over."

He obeyed. Kyle yanked Kenny's knees apart, as it seemed he was already fond of doing. He heard Kyle behind him spit into his hand and shortly after the prod of slick fingers which made him press his forehead into his mattress and groan. After that a dull pressure and burn that he gritted his teeth against. He heard Kyle moan, cursing hoarsely, felt Kyle's hot breath between his shoulder blades, felt Kyle's hands slipping under him, long fingers that tangled with his own.

It felt too good. Kyle's lips which grazed the nape of his neck, skin skimming over skin and the burn where their bodies met. It was too young and too good and afterwards they slept with thin limbs tangled, barely covered by sheets, and the room didn't become cold again until early morning.

 _ **Thank you indigoapple, my first reviewer!**_

 _ **To indigoapple: Thank you for your kind comment! So grateful to hear that, I really do my best to keep interactions between characters simple and natural... And yeah I always liked hooker-Kenny too, I mean it feels so canon-ish, like how could someone not call it after that Krazy Kenny Show episode hahaha :D**_


	5. Chapter 5

At late 17, this would've been Kyle Broflovski's ninth stay at Hell's Pass.

Most kids, at some point, paid their dues to the place. Like a pilgrimage, maybe, to a shrine of small-town dysfunction or whatever-the-hell—some admitted for post-brawl patch-ups, others perhaps for nonconsensual organ donations, a couple psychiatric hospitalizations, breast augmentation, terminal muscular disease, treatment of unidentified bodily sores that could only be described as vaginal in appearance, or even just for a secluded place to die.

By 7 p.m. the evening after Kyle's ninth admittance, a small horde had formed outside his room 206 B, consisting mostly of kids from his class with a few fools from the grade ahead.

"Oh my god Kyle, thank fuck you're ok!" Wendy pouted, rushing in with a bouquet of feeble, half-budded tulips. He grimaced in thanks, hoping that his look would be received as merely wan and not fully ungrateful, supposing that the rarity of flowers in South Park at this time of year took precedence over his severe and regrettably un-promulgated pollen allergies. Bebe, fully made-up, hovered after Wendy, and then a few others, and Kyle found it dully comical that none of them appeared to have made to visit Butters recovering from a day-old appendicitis two rooms down.

Who he really wanted to see though was Stan, about whom he inquired at a hiss as Wendy reached over his bed to place the tulips onto the windowsill. Wendy frowned down at him through the space between her elbows. Her tits were suspended a mere few inches over his face and smelled like peaches. She slapped his hand away as he petted one nonchalantly.

"He's on his way back," she assured, reaching down as if to brush the hair off his forehead but quickly reconsidering as she zeroed in on the palm-sized, purpling blotch on his temple. It looked positively rotten up close, as in like, fruit. "He was here for the whole day, you know, while you were still out and he's just getting a change of clothes and something to eat and—yeah, do you need him?"

"Yeah, I do. Can you call him? My phone's in there." He pointed to his school backpack deposited by Sheila on a visitor chair, which he honestly hadn't himself unzipped in forever, catching Wendy by the top of her shirt before she could withdraw. She frowned down at his bruised knuckles between her cleavage. "And can you get all these—" he made a general flapping motion with his hand "— _people_ out of my fucking room?"

Bebe had drawn up a chair beside his bed, elbows resting on the mattress and chin just grazing the top of his hip as she watched his face with intent curiosity. Beyond the sage-colored privacy curtain he could hear Clyde and Token whispering heatedly, waiting for Wendy and Bebe to clear the zone and apparently distraught with eager anticipation, and beyond that still others whose chirps and murmurs he could not identify and frankly didn't want to. Wendy smiled in a pinched way she believed to be sympathetic.

"They just wanna see how you're doing Kyle. I mean you've been in a bad accident and they just—"

"I was _skiing_ Wendy, ok? It's completely retarded and they're all just here because they think it's funny, not that it isn't but I don't wanna deal right now. With their shit. So tell them to go bother Butters down the hall—Bebe stop _touching_ me—"

Bebe's hand had slipped incognito under the sheets and was tracing a seam down the inside of his thigh, her knuckles brushing the tip of his dick, and she pouted as he swatted at her.

"—and I want you to just call Stan ok? Call Stan or—actually just give it to me so I can call."

The pounding in his head grew sharper, situational claustrophobia aggravated by his numb right leg, the whispers from beyond the curtain beginning to tickle unbearably. He snatched his phone from Wendy.

"Get out. I need to call Stan."

Wendy's eyes were wide with protest, her palms clasped.

"Kyle—"

He ripped his covers away, Bebe squealing as they hit her in the face, throwing his good leg over the side of the bed and dragging the bad one after it with his hands cupped under the knee, sliding his hips through the gap between the bed railings, wheezing terribly as he tumbled forward onto the floor, the impact awakening nerves that preferred to remain dormant. He pulled himself to his feet by the rubbery curtain, throwing it open. Token and Clyde and the crew of stragglers behind gasped as they saw him. Their eyes, scoping in all different directions over his body reminded him of those crude animations intended to educate on the behavior of gaseous molecules.

"Hey guys," he spat, grinned. He leaned onto his good leg, releasing the curtain to fumble with the fastenings at the back of his hospital gown. Bebe squeaked and grabbed Wendy's elbow, other hand flying to cover her mouth as she realized what he was doing.

"It's too fucking hot with all of you in here," Kyle informed, tearing the gown from his body. He balled it and pitched it, hooted at the wad of minty cotton unfurling as it struck Clyde in the face.

"Oh my god!" Bebe squealed, her eyes widening on Kyle's bare ass from the back.

"He's naked," Token murmured. He reached for his DSLR, which was hanging readily uncapped from his neck.

"Kyle!" Wendy shouted. "Oh my god Kyle, why can't you just _tell_ us if you don't want us here! And Token put your goddamn camera away for fucking Christ's sake—"

She tore the gown from terrified Clyde's fumbling hands and smacked Kyle in the chest with it, near causing him to lose his balance.

"Leaving already?" he jeered, howling. "'Cause there's more where that came from you ass-sucking, fetus-licking, cow-fucking—"

The whole lot of them where fleeing then, some whistling, some trembling mortified, some ogling his crotch over their shoulders as they were flushed from the room and others the wad of bandaging on his right knee or the yellow-prune dappling over his midsection and face, Bebe squeezing his left ass cheek in passing as Wendy dragged her furiously towards the door. He spotted a pair of crutches left for him that had fallen to the floor and crawled towards on one bent knee, eyes watering at the splintering sensation now intensifying in his bandaged leg.

Kyle teetered back to the bed on sticks, dialed Stan. He shook out his backpack onto the floor with one hand, snatched up his denim jacket which, though harsh against abraded skin, hung large enough to conceal everything that ought to be.

—

"Dude, why are you here. He specifically called me saying he didn't want you to come."

Stan was stationed firmly outside the door to Kyle's hospital room, arms crossed but looking nevertheless queasy. He frowned at Kenny in front of him, Kenny who scoffed and rolled his eyes.

"That's bullshit. He's just being a diva."

Stan narrowed his eyes. "You two haven't talked in months. Why do you think he'd want to see you now? In, of course, a hypothetical situation where he hadn't straight up _said_ that he didn't want to see you."

"Well what am I supposed to do, not visit?"

"He told me to tell you to go see Butters. Two rooms down." Stan jerked his head over his shoulder. At Kenny's unhumored gaze he lowered his voice, face tightening into a sullen glare with such ease that it seemed more a release than a constriction. "I don't know what you did to him," he hissed.

"What?" Kenny's expression was carefully guarded but he flinched as Stan caught him by his collar and dragged him down the hall beyond earshot of Kyle's room.

"Look. You were with him and now you're not. And I bet you pulled it over his head like a fucking—I dunno—kidnapping sack or something. You know he can't take that kinda crap Kenny, you know he—"

"I was never _with_ him Stan. I never—we never—didn't—"

He faltered under the tension of confrontation a long time coming, feverishly regretting showing up here at all, against Stan's words which were really Kyle's, against his own intuition. The hallway opened and Wendy stepped through with two plastic bags of "Shitty" Wok takeout. A reverberant clang from the door but neither Kenny nor Stan payed her arrival heed.

"Don't you fucking lie to me. I could _smell_ you on each other. Don't fucking lie to me. Ever since he started hanging out with you he's been going off the rails."

An accusation that made Kenny scoff. Scoff and fist fly involuntarily to clutch the shirt fabric at his ribs.

"Oh and that's my fault? Because, god curse my poor cracker ass but he _likes_ going off the rails, Stan. Don't fucking pin his sorry bullshit on me."

"I just don't get what the hell happened," Stan continued, unhearing, gesticulating with abandon and eyes searching the place for something that was not there. "I mean he didn't barely even like you when we were kids and now—"

"That's completely fucking mean, Stan!" Wendy blurted from the doorway, eyes wide and voice shrill with shock.

"Yeah Stan that's fucking mean!" Kenny mimicked in falsetto. Wendy scowled.

"Kenny—"

"Shut up Wendy!" Stan looked about to burst into tears. "This is between—"

"No, both of _you_ shut up. Y _eah_ you Wendy, because it's not mean if it's fucking true. No one fucking liked me when we were kids. Except goddamn Cartman when you and Kyle pissed on him too hard."

"Oh so now you're feeling sorry for yourself."

"I am not, Stan. Look because, _I_ wasn't the one who let him ski off a _cliff_ —" he snickered, hating himself, seeing in his minds eye Kyle flying comatose off the side of a snowed slope like a marble off the end of a play-set slide "—on a closed run while he was he wasted, and _I_ didn't shove all that crap down his throat—don't give me that look you shit, you _know_ he sucks out pill bottles like they're filled with fucking green apple Tic Tacs—"

"I didn't know that!" Stan cried out, fingers curling into his hair, and Wendy slipped the "Shitty" Wok bags onto a hallway bench to loop her arms around Stan's neck and breathe comforting things against his ear.

"—pointing your finger at someone who wasn't within a hundred _miles_ of the place and—frankly, if you wanna see someone who feels sorry for himself you can go back to exhibit 206 B—"

"You son of a _bitch—_ "

"—because yeah, I was there outside the door when he started stripping and screaming and I _heard_ him on the phone with you, that he didn't want me to come, and thanks-very-much but I don't give a shit so will you fucking move aside now—"

"Hey guys."

Kenny squelched. Stan's face whitened and his fingers twitched like he wanted to strangle Kenny, or maybe himself, but he resigned to grit his teeth and pinch the bridge of his nose, eyes smashed shut.

"Hey there Kyle," Stan gritted. "What are you doing out here?"

"Just sayin' hi."

Kenny could see Kyle over Stan's shoulder, dressed in nothing but that giant trucker jacket. Kyle, who was staring right at him, smirking, and Kenny grew cold with a wholly unanticipated terror at the sight. Blackened temple adjacent to a swelling purple socket, a knob of bandaging over his right knee and little black stitches stretched over miscellaneous cuts. Contusion-mottled shins and a rectangle of hair shaved off the side of his head and stitches on the exposed scalp.

It all made Kenny wretchedly incomprehensibly furious and very, very tired.

He let himself fall against the wall, rolled away against it's synthetic finish.

"Where ya goin' Kenny?"

Kyle's voice, glittering with amusement. Kenny walked slowly towards the double doors, feet dull and heavy. The air he moved through felt suddenly gelatinous. He heard the click of Kyle's crutches against the floor.

"Aren't you happy to see me Kenny?" he called, sounding near cracking with mirth. Kenny's hands balled into fists and his jaw clenched, molars clamping down on the insides of his cheeks. He squeezed the metal push bar with clawed fingers, slipped through, and even after it clicked behind him he could still hear Kyle howling with laughter, the peals echoing viciously over cold linoleum. His sneakers squeaked jeering as he hurtled down the sterile white hallway, loathing himself splendidly.

 _Thank you for reading and reviewing!_

 _Southparkreader873: Ok, I reread ch1 and actually I am with you that it kind of doesn't make lmao… I'm trying to write this non-chronological like a montage, so hopefully it will make more sense later. but if it doesn't I will add some clarification. the jist of it is that Kyle is following Kenny b/c he's suspects that Kenny is doing, well, that… anyway, i will be on higher alert for confusions like this :D_

 _indigoapple: Thank you again! I'm so glad you like what you've read so far. I really admire your writing too, so please keep reading and let me know if you have any suggestions or critique :))_

 _NCC-24601: IKR?! because in the actual show kyle is so much more vehement and domineering than kenny. like i guess kenny is perverse, for sure, and it makes ppl overlook the fact that he's actually really quiet! actually that's part of the reason i find his character interesting, because reserved people often have a ton going on in their heads :P_

 _Thanks to all. Love to hear what people think._


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